I wish I had started on this sooner, because I think my memory is pretty much shot of the last few months. I don't remember things as specifically as I once did, though this may largely be due to the fact that I have had much less to do on Neoseeker. My post count hardly raises at the level it once did, a year ago, averaging 1000 per month. I think this is due to many reasons. For one, I lost interest in the USA forum, and I do not even have it on my favorite forums list anymore. It had always been a struggling forum, and it eventually sunk to an all time low, that I did not think it even needed a moderator anymore. When I checked back, after a few months, it was more active. I have had similar trouble in IE. A new conservative, silverboner, helped me to realize how tiring it can be to debate things like abortion and religion incessantly. It is especially hard when it feels like you are banging your head against a brick wall.

This silverboner guy has struck me as odd for a number of reasons. First of all, you do not expect a religious conservative like him to have the word "boner" in their name. Secondly, he is probably one of the most talented debaters, because he makes his arguments look strong, despite the fact that they aren't. He goes in circles with his points and never concedes, even when he is proven wrong. He is one of the most persistent and eloquent of our religious members, and possibly the most annoying, which we didn't think was possible, after Gaming Geezer, who has been kind of a no-show in the last few months. Last I remember of him, he said he had just started on his doctorate in theology. Koloth remarked that he was still waiting for that book he also started writing two years ago. I love Koloth.

Fallen Hero has also made a return in the last few months. I think he never was too happy about my banning him in the past for flaming, but he probably had better reasons for his long absence. He still curses up a storm, but he is more jocose about it, and he tends not to flame people directly anymore. After the likes of Gaming Geezer and silverboner, I have come to appreciate the intelligent, yet vulgar, Fallen Hero. He has a straight head on, and from what I understand, is actually a nice guy, but he vanquishes his enemies with such intense passion, that you would think he is a jerk all around. As I said, he has made improvements in his demeanor, which I think are good. I do not like to ban people who usually share my side in arguments, but I do have to maintain order in the forum, and I also think it would be to Fallen Hero's benefit if he worked more on his ethos and less on his pathos. He said he wants to be a lawyer for the ACLU, to defend people's legal and civil rights. That is only going to work if he can appeal to people, instead of being vindictive. It's all politics.

I also made one of best friends on Neoseeker, in IE. In the late summer, Faithhandler made a farewell thread, as he was leaving to go to boot camp in the Marine Corps. I never really knew him much at the time, but I always thought of him as a very intelligent young man. I had thought of him as a much milder version on Fallen Hero, especially because they were both Atheist and tended to agree on general issues. Also, I think the vague similarity in their names may have contributed to that, but I always thought of Faithhandler in a positive light. The eve before my seventeenth birthday, he returned and made a thread of utter desperation. He had been injured in boot camp, just days before he would have finished and become a full-fledged U.S. Marine, his life dream. The injury, if I recall correctly, caused permanent nerve damage to his arm, and he was no longer in a condition in which he could serve, so he was thrown out, having failed in his ultimate pursuit. His fiancée, with whom he had been since early in high school and to whom he had been engaged before leaving for boot camp, began cheating on him. Apparently, his misery and melancholy that had spawned from his failure in the Marines shattered his spirit, and his girl Melissa know longer saw the man who had smitten her, so they split apart. Faithhandler had lost his career and his lover, all in just a few months, and he had an injury that he would carry for the rest of his life. He had lost all hope, and so he came to Neoseeker as a final haven; he, a broken refugee.

I decided that he could have his own thread, instead of using the standard Depression thread, because I thought his scenario was special and rare. After a few pages, I figured it had reached its goal and closed it but not without apologizing for the possible callousness of my actions. I began talking to Faithhandler through MSN, and I got to know him quite well. I learned so much about him, about how he was born of a drug-addicted mother, yet a determined father who always worked hard, through his own depression, to raise Faithhandler and his twin brother. They both grew up very poor and never had much, and he started out as an overweight kid. His sanctuaries were in Marvel comics and games like Metal Gear Solid, things that inspired him to become a hero. In his teenage years, he burned off his fat and became the strong, burly man that he is today, and found his first love, Melissa, who was like an angel in every way. Two very critical things happened within the next few years. His mother attempted to commit suicide by gassing herself to death. Although she had not been there for him, he could not stand to let his mother die, and he carried her out of her makeshift gas chamber to get medical help. I cannot really say if the next thing is better or worse. His girlfriend was maliciously raped. It was hard on both of them, but he was there for her and supported her the whole time. I cannot fathom how much he must have loved her.

Needless to say, he has been through so much in his short life, and now the sunrise on the horizon ahead was vanished, and it seemed that there was no course left for his life to run. Now I began to talk to him more on MSN, as the year neared an end. He began talking a lot more in IE, especially about things like the Presidential Election, which as I said in the last chapter, was a pretty big topic in the forum. By December, he and I had become very close and had exchanged MSNs. He and I soon began to see each other as brothers, a sentiment we still feel now. I am glad that I met him, and he has made Neoseeker much more valuable in my life.

I also became less interested in Loungin'. Popularity dropped for a bit and the threads just seemed redundant, and I feel like my time in Loungin' is up. I have discussed much and met a lot of people there, but my heart is just not in it anymore. I rarely post at all these days. My last one was pretty big. The only significant things in Loungin' for me were the two interviews that I did and the game thread that I will mention later on. Just after the last update, Unity's interview was posted. People thought it was okay. I knew it would not be one of my masterpieces that received high praise as with Willow and Daedric. He and I actually ended up having to do the whole thing on two different days, which ruined the flow of the interview. When I interviewed my old pal Various, I redeemed my previous shortcoming. His interview came up in February. His also got some good feedback, but a few people seemed annoyed that I kept asking about politics, which I had done in both the Unity and Various interviews. When I interviewed Unity, the November Elections had just ended, and our state of North Carolina had just been announced for Obama. When I interviewed Various, Obama had recently been inaugurated. They were perfectly legitimate questions for the times they were asked, and I never brought up politics in Willow's or Daedric's interviews.

Interestingly enough, Willow would go on to invite me to the Halo Social Forum in late December, which is moderated by Daedric Prince, her friend. She said I should go there, because it is like Loungin', but without all the "knobs". This is essentially true. Some of Neoseeker's best and brightest go there, and we get to have general discussions that deviate from the standard seen in Loungin'. I think I understand what Loungin' was like in its alleged Golden Age, when there were less people and a tighter community. Some other regulars include Jeffroe, TikiPenguin, Zarathustra, The Don, Chelskiman, TurMoiL911, and Praetorian_Lord. I got Faithhandler to become a regular.

While things have been better there, I have had some troubles. It mostly started the Religion thread that we had there. I got into a debate with Daedric Prince about the existence of God. I vaguely remember discussing it with him in IE, when he was a knew member with that evil-looking knight as an avatar and before he was even a moderator. The one specific that I remember from those discussions is how he had this chronic illness from what I think was a brain virus that should have killed him, but after a priest did one of those Catholic rituals to bless the ailing for recovery, he got began to get better, and he has believed ever since than that God cured him.

In that discussion at Halo Social, I argued that we could not know God existed without proof, and Daedric argued that we could reason that he exists by using our "intellect". His friend Jeffroe took his side and called me out as being arrogant, because I moderated IE. I went to great lengths that to explain that "intellect" alone tells us nothing. One thing Daedric Prince said specifically is that we know not to touch hot stoves as children through our "intellects", without proof being necessary. I rebutted, saying that we ourselves do not need to be burned to know better, because parents just have to tell us that it will. We may also see someone else get burned. We can put our hand above it and feel the faint heat. In some way or another, it is proven to us that stoves or bad to touch when hot. His theory on "intellect" only works with real world situations, concerning things that have been proven true since before either of us was born. It, in no way, can lead us to know, in any rational train of thought, that God exists.

The next issue arose in the first Relationships thread. A lot of people were bothering Final Blade about this rumor that had long been spread about him. I know a lot of people think negatively about Final Blade, and even I think that he is not very personable, but this little witch hunt that took place was completely unwarranted. It was some rumor that he had once swallowed or tasted his own semen. Jeffroe and Willow were hassling him about it, and they stood by their points, because apparently they thought that if so many people said it was true, then it must be. When Final Blade started replying angrily to them, Stigmatised joined the barrage in what looked like an attempt to defend Willow. I called him out on that and the rest of them for making such a crude accusation without any proof. Stigmatised of course disagreed, and then Praetorian_Lord took my side on it, because he thought Stigmatised was being pretty personal about it. Jeffroe continued being a troll. He tried to mock me and my point about needing proof to know something in the Religion thread by saying that since I had no proof to disprove the rumor, it was true, which is a totally twisted misrepresentation of what my point was, which I am sure that he knew, because he kept trying to dodge the burden of proof and then attacked me instead of Final Blade when I called him out on it. Daedric eventually stopped the fight, but he allowed the discussion to continue as long as it was civil. Bullshit. He should have done something about Jeffroe, Willow, and Stigmatised, who were doing nothing more than instigating and bullying in the thread. What they did should have ended in fair, well-earned bans, but I think Daedric was lenient, because he did not think his friends could do so wrong. I am still gravely disappointed in my friends Willow and Stigmatised for having stooped so low, without what even seemed like the slightest shred of remorse.

At this point, Jeffroe had set in place some personal enmity between us. Fortunately, this was vented constructively. A Member Hurt and Heal thread was created about a month ago. Jeffroe and I essentially created two competing alliances. He was determined to stop me and my allies from winning, and so was I to him. He killed me about of the third of the way through, but I put up a good and fight and had two of Jeffroe's crew taken down first, before I lost another guy. When I died, I said that Faithhandler was my Byzantine, an historical allusion to the Fall of the Roman Empire but the survival of the Byzantine Empire. I then thought it would be cool if he changed his name to Byzantine, but I did not tell anyone. That night, I told Faithhandler that same metaphor, that he was my Byzantine, and it was as though he read my mind. He thought it would be an awesome, new username, and within days, he had it changed to Byzantine.

In the aftermath of the thread, Zarathustra won, our secret ally. We gave little attention to him, because we knew Jeffroe would attack whomever we wanted to win. I actually used this against him in punishing Praetorian_Lord, who refused to heal me when I asked. I had my guys heal him, and then Jeffroe's guys attacked him like vultures and nearly killed him. P_L quickly renounced any ties with me to save his ass, but it was too little too late. He was soon finished off after having been weakened, and we made our enemies into our puppets. I do not think Jeffroe was happy, because he kept trying to assert that I did not win. Well, of course, I was killed. In the end, there could only be one, and I made sure that one of my teammates did, and that was a success. I did not win the thread itself, but I did win the political battle.

Not too long afterward, a similar thread arose in Loungin'. I did not have as much success with that, as I made too many allies in it. I tried vigorously to get Taki or The Lost Soul to win. It is funny how I became allied with Taki, just by following my gut instinct to flatter her. I am glad I did. She is a pretty swell girl. I do need to talk to her more, though, and her time zone is not helping. Anyway, The Lost Soul eventually got all of his allies to start attacking Taki, and I had to struggle like a mad man to keep her alive. I specifically told him not to hurt her, but he did anyway. He decided to go renegade and eliminate everyone at once to secure his victory, so he could have a spot in the Neo Elections. When the mods analyzed it, they felt the whole alliance system was unfair and set all the remaining people who were in when The Lost Soul began his blitzkrieg were reset to ten points. Needless to say, he had pissed too many people off and was the first to fall. Taki fell soon afterward, which sucked, because she had agreed to let me see a picture of her if had I helped her to win. My curiosity was overwhelming, so it was a disappointment when I failed.

I gave The Lost Soul a stern lecture and told him to apologize in the thread for ruining everyone's fun, and he did. Then things were quiet for a while. I continued my new routines, posting in Halo Social, moderating IE, and trying to fulfill my campaign pledge to bring activity to Academia. I was hit by a stroke of luck. Just a couple weeks ago, my best friend (in real life), told me about a game that was similar to the one I had tried to create late last year. It was very similar, almost exactly what I wanted. I quickly contacted Praetorian_Lord about it, and he gave me the go-ahead. I made the thread and it soon filled with many people. Neoseeker's Greats like Deathsythe and Chad came to the thread and play regularly. The game is perfect, because it is the kind of game you can play while browsing Neo. I finally brought activity to Academia.

Another task of mine, just as recent as that thread, has to do with my involvement in the Call of Duty: World at War (Wii) forum. I created an Offical Forum Medals thread, to award medals to players for the performances on Wi-fi or for their behavior in the forum. It has had decent results, but I would like to see more come out of it.

I know now that my term as President of Neoseeker is coming to an end. The Elections will also be here quite soon. I am not going to run again. I think it is time that we let someone else enjoy the prestige of our most basic form of self-government on the site. I will participate immensely in the event itself and coach whoever needs advice. I look forward to this event, which should be happening any time now. I am very hopeful that I can have fun with it, alongside my new-found brother, Eric, my east-side, my Byzantine. On February 11, he made a thread, saying that Neoseeker had saved his life. He found solace and comfort among the people. So many times he had been on the verge of suicide, when an MSN window would come from Machienzo, Naked Snak3, or me. I am so glad that I met him, an honorable man and a beloved friend. These days, he has a girlfriend about whom he is crazy, and he studying for his doctorate in Anthropology, and I am glad that I helped him make it that far.